150 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
a case cannot, I think, be safely set down to fascina- 
tion, nor to anything more out of the common than 
curiosity, and, as in the case of the volatile, sprightly 
fly and terrestrial spider, to the illusion produced 
in the victim’s mind that the suspicious-looking 
object is stationary. 
Concerning the use, here suggested, of the 
tongue in fascination, I can scarcely expect that 
those whose knowledge of the snake is derived 
from books, from specimens in museums, and from 
seeing the animal alive in confinement, will regard 
it as anything more than an improbable supposition, 
unsupported by facts. But to those who have 
attentively observed the creature in a state of 
nature, and have been drawn to it by, and won- 
dered at, its strangeness, the explanation, I venture 
to think, will not seem improbable. To weigh, 
count, measure, and dissect for purposes of 
identification, classification, and what not, and to 
search in bones and tissues for hidden affinities, it 
is necessary to see closely; but this close seeing 
would be out of place and a hindrance in other 
lines of inquiry. To know the creature, undivested 
of life or liberty or of anything belonging to it, it 
must be seen with an atmosphere, in the midst of 
the nature in which it harmoniously moves and has 
its being, and the image it casts on the observer’s 
retina and mind must be identical with its image 
in the eye and mind of the other wild creatures that 
share the earth with it. It is not here maintained 
that the tongue is everything, nor that it is the 
